CRASHED PILOT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 133, 2 December 1944, Page 11

CRASHED PILOT

STUDIED RO^OT SITES

Masquerading as a French peasant, Wing Commander Robert T. P. Davidson for four months studied the launching of flying bombs and helped men of the Maquis in their sabotage expeditions. Wing Commander Davidson, who is 27 and from Vancouver, made a crash landing when his plane was hit by flak during a sortie over France on May 8. "Tell my wife I'm okay," he called through the plane's wireless telephone to his squadron flying above, and then sprinted into a wheat field and disappeared for four months.

Although the Germans attempted to track him with hounds he escaped, because French people "milled around the aircraft and so confused the dogs that it was impossible for them to pick up the scent." From anti-Nazi Frenchmen, who worked on or near flying-bomb launching sites, he gathered detailed material, including drawings and plans of the weapon. He said that 15' per cent, of the robots crashed on taking off. With the F.F.I, he cut telephone wires, raided guard posts, strung rope across highways to trap dispatch riders, and blew up bridges and installations. He witnessed enough of German atrocity to be convinced that the Nazis "are human in dress and features but mentally they are beasts."